A dream tour of Utah: Sponsors make pro bicycle race reality

When Jason Preston was a youngster growing up as a bicycling enthusiast and watching the Tour de France on television, he got to thinking how Utah's mountains and valleys might stack up to those in France.

His thought: "Boy, why not here? What would it be like to have Lance Armstrong in my backyard, racing up these mountains right here?"

Armstrong has retired, but Preston's dream of having many of the top American pro cyclists — eventually many top international racers — is coming true.

The Tour of Utah, which he started and directed for the first time last year as an all-comers race, has expanded to a six-stage event for the country's top 100 riders, now that it has the backing of Zions Bank, the Utah Sports Commission and the Larry H. Miller Group, for whom the event has been renamed the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah.

The race will be held Aug. 7-12 and have a $40,000 purse, along with another $5,000 kicked in by Zions at Tuesday's press conference at the Delta Center. This year's budget is about $800,000, and that will escalate in years to come, said Preston.

The country's four top teams — Toyota United, TIAA-Cref, Health Net and Navigators Insurance — have already signed on for the 500-plus-mile event that bills itself as "America's toughest pro cycling race," mainly because of Stage 6.

Stage 6, being called the Snowbird Mountain Race, on Aug. 12, is 185 kilometers starting at the Delta Center and going through Emigration Canyon, Park City and Provo Canyon, past Sundance and over the Alpine Loop to Traverse Ridge and then up Little Cottonwood Canyon Road to the 'Bird.

Other major U.S. races like the tours of Georgia and California can't offer such difficulty.

And it's that challenge that will draw the best, Preston said.

"It's the terrain. It's Utah," he said, adding that such an altitude gain (some 17,000 feet) in just 119 miles isn't available anywhere else. "You can't find a stage like that anywhere."

Gardie Jackson of the Sienna Development/Goble Knee Clinic team, one of four local racers at the press conference, agreed.

"Nobody has ever seen anything like this. Stage 6, from a racer's standpoint, will break the backs of the majority of these riders," he said.

Todd Hageman of the Park City Cycling Academy said cyclists get their kicks pushing their bodies.

"I haven't seen a stage like this anywhere in this country that absolutely pushes you to the near absolute limit. This would be a tough stage if it stood by itself, but being at the end of a six-day series makes it that much more difficult. There's going to be a lot of people (who) find out what they're made of."

Several of the riders said their familiarity with the terrain and altitude will help.